Naming Names
The 1996 elections had no
sooner sloughed into despond than I came across the following sentence in an
election-eve wrap-up by Michael Lewis in the New Republic . "There is no
denying," Lewis wrote, in the finale to an antic "Campaign Journal" series that
saw him parting the crowds around various presidential entourages with the
prosthetic assistance of a television Steadycam on his shoulder, "that I was
excited by working alongside Ted Koppel, driven less by a Fallovian desire to
inform the public than a lust to become rich and famous."
The word
popped out: Fallovian . Could I have been witnessing the birth of an
eponym--as wondrous a sight in its way as our recent glimpse of an
island-in-the-making off the coast of Hawaii? An eponym, of course, is a word
that has been formed from the name of a person, place, or thing
( eponumos is a Greek word meaning "named on"). For some eponymous terms,
the eponymy is obvious, or famous: Caesarean section ; graham
cracker ; Molotov cocktail ; boycott ; leotard ;
Luddite ; silhouette ; volt . Many more eponyms, though
familiar, are not so obviously eponymous. Maudlin , for instance, comes
from the name of Mary Magdalene, who in painted and sculpted form is typically
shown weeping. Masochism comes from the name of the demented
19 th -century novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who described the
relevant eponymous practices in his writings. (Recently, a group in Ukraine has
been attempting to raise a monument to Masoch in his native city, Lviv.)
And Fallovian ? In this case, the contextual evidence
suggested that Michael Lewis' coinage fell into the class of eponym known as a
"derivative"--in this case, derived from a name, that of James Fallows, editor
of U.S. News & World Report , who has championed an approach to
reporting that emphasizes hard analysis of serious issues and eschews the cult
of journalists as highly paid pundits, celebrities, or oddsmakers. Lewis
confirmed that this meaning was precisely the one intended, and said that, as
far as he knew, his use of it in the New Republic marked this proper
noun's maiden voyage as an adjective. Fallows himself, affably abashed, was
unaware of previous appearances of the term.
Eponymous
words have never needed much tending or encouragement. There are about 35,000
of them in the ordinary stock of the English language, a figure that does not
include the many eponymous words in the specialized languages of science,
engineering, and especially medicine. The use of eponyms in medicine is steeply
on the decline, but ordinary eponyms, linguistic experts say, are enjoying a
growth spurt these days. According to citations in recent newspapers and
magazines, to gump through life is to make one's way by means of dumb
luck. To espouse two positions at once is to pull a Clinton . To adopt
the hairstyle popularized by the actress Jennifer Aniston on Friends is
to get a Rachel or to get a Friends do . A sagan is
a unit of quantity equivalent to "billions and billions"--the quotation an
unintentionally self-parodic trademark of the late astronomer Carl Sagan.
Imeldific , made possible by Imelda Marcos, refers to ostentatious
grandiosity and extravagant bad taste. An Iraqi manicure is torture.
Waldheimer's
disease is a convenient lapse of memory.
To kevork someone is to assist him in
the commission of suicide--an eponym derived proximately, of course, from the
work of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, but made possible by the prior success of the
rhyming verb to
bork (from the name Robert Bork, and meaning to
use every means possible to sabotage a nominee to high office). An eponymous
verb derived from the name O.J. Simpson-- to
O.J. , meaning "to
slash"--shows some signs of acceptance among teen-agers ( O.J. had a
previous life as an eponym, denoting a big car of the kind Simpson drove in his
commercials for Hertz. "Drive off in a def O.J.," went a line in a 1979 rap
song by the Sugar Hill Gang.)
The verb
to
bobbitt , with its well-known specific connotation under the
household-amputation rubric, has become so widely used as to have now acquired
metaphoric senses. For instance, the verb is used to mean "to deprive of vigor"
in this sentence from a letter to the editor of the conservative Washington
Times : "Bravo to Tony Snow for exposing the bobbi[t]ting of the GOP
leadership when confronted with Democratic tirades." (Linguistic note from
abroad: The practice of bobbitting , according to an Asia correspondent
of some years--my sister Cait, as it happens--is relatively frequent in
Thailand. The local name for the practice is a Thai word that, when translated
into English, means "feeding the ducks.")
The surge in eponyms is no doubt related, in part, to the
efflorescence of metanames in general. Pseudonyms have never been more widely
employed than they are today, when millions of invented, incorporeal identities
are in play in all kinds of electronic communication. The married woman who
takes her husband's family name as a surname yet keeps her own family name as a
middle name--Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sandra Day O'Connor--has unwittingly
introduced a new form of patronymic, which takes its place alongside the more
traditional (Slavic, Scandinavian, Islamic, Hispanic) versions. Even anonymity,
owing to controversy earlier this year over the authorship of the novel
Primary Colors , has had to endure an uncharacteristically high public
profile in recent months. I don't know what name future historians will bestow
on our present age, but arguably the age deserves not a name but a nym.
Why more eponymy now? Some
people, of course, have set out to make well-known eponymous terms of their
names, as Donald Trump is doing with his new magazine Trump Style . The
proliferation of commercial brand names is certainly a major factor: Consider
Nintendo neck , the Twinkie defense , the Teflon presidency .
For reasons that hardly need belaboring, it is easier today than ever before
for any name--personal or commercial--to become widely known quickly, even if
transiently. Memorable eponymous terms require memorable nominal roots and, in
the English-speaking world, people's names are becoming more diverse and
interesting as more cultures are demographically and linguistically annexed.
Also, eponymous terms allow almost anyone to display competence, even
brilliance, at coining useful and appropriate-sounding new words--thereby
encouraging further attempts to do so.
Leona Helmsley. Mark Fuhrman.
Alfonse D'Amato. Madonna. Roberto Alomar. Mother Teresa. Bill Gates. Oliver
Stone. These and scores of other names cry out for eponyplasty. I look forward
to your suggestions.
